‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Imam Out After Comments On Homosexuality

Park 51 developer Sharif El-Gamal announced today that Iman Abdallah Adhami has stepped down from the project known as the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

“We have been humbled by Imam Adhami’s contributions to this project over the past few months,” El-Gamal said. “His teachings and scholarly work on the Islamic faith remain an important part of our community. We look forward to him, God willing, leading prayers informally for Park51 in the near future.”

Adhami was named a senior adviser to the project after the previous face of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, stepped down to pursue a book project and he publicly stated that the project would have been better off at a different location.

But Adhami has come under fire himself in recent days and it was revealed that he delivered a lecture in which he said that homosexuality is a result of a “painful trial” caused by past trauma.

“An enormously overwhelming percentage of people struggle with homosexual feeling because of some form of violent emotional or sexual abuse at some point in their life,” he said in the lecture, first reported by Grace Rauh of NY1. “A small, tiny percentage of people are born with a natural inclination that they cannot explain. You find this in the animal kingdom at some level as well.”

Adhami said in a statement that he too will work on book, which he says is designed to assist “English readers in understanding and facilitating the language of the Quran.”